Clevon Raphael

All po­lit­i­cal fo­cus will be on To­ba­go for the next 68 days, at which time the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion is sched­uled to take place, on Jan­u­ary 21. Each elec­tion, be it THA or the gen­er­al elec­tion, is al­ways de­scribed as the most im­por­tant or some sim­i­lar de­scrip­tion. How­ev­er, the up­com­ing polls can be tru­ly said to be cru­cial for the po­lit­i­cal lives of some of the ma­jor play­ers this time round.

Ar­guably the par­ty to suf­fer the most if it should lose on the night of Jan­u­ary 21 is the in­cum­bent Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, which has held on to the as­sem­bly for the past three four-year terms. The PNM lost the May 24, 2010, gen­er­al elec­tion to the new­ly as­sem­bled Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship led by now Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The par­ty suf­fered an­oth­er hu­mil­i­at­ing de­feat in the sub­se­quent lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions in Trinidad.

So one can hard­ly dis­agree with the Ash­worth Jack-led Op­po­si­tion par­ty, the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple, which is as­sert­ing that this will be a make or break ex­er­cise for the PNM par­tic­u­lar­ly in the is­land. The PNM of course would not be de­stroyed as a po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty but its at­trac­tive­ness as an or­gan­i­sa­tion to once more gov­ern T&T will be brought un­der even more se­ri­ous scruti­ny.

De­pend­ing on the re­sults, some se­ri­ous mud will have been thrown in the face of THA Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don and to a less­er ex­tent the PNM's leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who has tak­en over the par­ty at a time when it is said that mem­bers' loy­al­ty is di­vid­ed be­tween him­self and for­mer leader Patrick Man­ning.

Lead­ing the charge against the PNM is the TOP, while a third par­ty in the race is the Plat­form of Truth, led by a for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary, Ho­choy "Heavy Roller" Charles. I am tempt­ed to com­ment on this very dark horse's en­try in­to the fray, but I shall tem­per this by re­call­ing the words of for­mer PNM Min­is­ter Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed, who once said that a "G"-class horse has no right in an "A"-class race.

The Orville Lon­don-led PNM won eight of the as­sem­bly's 12 seats in the last poll and the TOP, which no doubt will be as­sist­ed by func­tionar­ies of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, of which TOP is an in­te­gral mem­ber, took the re­main­ing four.

The as­sem­bly, which got its life in 1980 with the pas­sage of the rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion, has come a long way since then. At the be­gin­ning sec­re­taries made around $1,900 a month even though they had no leg­isla­tive pow­ers to per­form the roles that they are do­ing now, such as pol­i­cy­mak­ing.

"Cab­i­net" mem­bers (of the THA) if you please. To­day they re­ceive $20,000 to­geth­er with perks such as trav­el­ling and hous­ing al­lowances. In­ter­est­ing­ly, even though the PNM has ruled the as­sem­bly for most of the time since 1980, the up­grad­ing of salaries and in­creas­es of the THA an­nu­al bud­get from cen­tral gov­ern­ment were made ei­ther un­der the NAR regime or the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

If Jack's TOP should top­ple PNM (it is rea­son­able to ex­pect he would be­come the next Chief Sec­re­tary) his salary au­to­mat­i­cal­ly jumps from $13,000 to that of a ju­nior min­is­ter in Trinidad-$20,000-plus, ex­cept he al­so has an of­fi­cial se­cu­ri­ty de­tail and res­i­dence.

Un­til the par­ties ac­tu­al­ly hit the cam­paign trail we will not know the full ex­tent of their re­spec­tive at­tacks, but al­ready they are sig­nalling what they will be; the PNM is stick­ing to its stance that it has per­formed very well over the last four years and will be point­ing to most of its achieve­ments like de­vel­op­ment of the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of the is­land.

On the oth­er hand the TOP will be ham­mer­ing the PNM for its al­leged wastage of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey and has al­ready drawn up a long list of in­com­plete projects or large cost over­runs on some of these projects to boost its claim that it would per­form bet­ter than the PNM.

POT is go­ing to ar­gue that both PNM and TOP are bad med­i­cines for what­ev­er ail­ments To­ba­go is suf­fer­ing. I have al­ways en­joyed cov­er­ing elec­tions in To­ba­go and you can bet be­cause of what the stakes are in this par­tic­u­lar elec­tion I will be most promi­nent in the front row tak­ing in all the ac­tion, which promis­es to be more ex­cit­ing than be­fore. So as they say: Cam­era, lights, ac­tion!